"Tens of thousands unopened VA claims" found

So much for the VA getting their act together! Think of the backlog of claims from opened mail and then add these claims to that and you have a veteran suffering along with usually a family as well. Support the troops has boiled down to just a bunch of words from Bush's hand picked friends instead of heads that put the veterans first!

Unopened claims letters hidden at VA offices
By Rick Maze - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Mar 3, 2009 17:22:51 EST

A new report about Veterans Affairs Department employees squirreling away tens of thousands of unopened letters related to benefits claims is sparking fresh concerns that veterans and their survivors are being cheated out of money.

VA officials acknowledge further credibility problems based on a new report of a previously undisclosed 2007 incident in which workers at a Detroit regional office turned in 16,000 pieces of unprocessed mail and 717 documents turned up in New York in December during amnesty periods in which workers were promised no one would be penalized.

“Veterans have lost trust in VA,” Michael Walcoff, VA’s under secretary for benefits, said at a hearing Tuesday. “That loss of trust is understandable, and winning back that trust will not be easy.”

Unprocessed and unopened mail was just one problem in VA claims processing mentioned by Belinda Finn, VA’s assistant inspector general for auditing, in testimony before the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee. click link for more